AT Dissay-sur-Courcillon (Sarthe, 950 inhabitants), a collective was created to save the village bakery, its only business. Placarded on the front of the shop, two electricity bills summarize the situation in which his boss, Laurent Rottier, finds himself. The first indicates the price he had to pay at the end of December: 1,322 euros. The second the amount of what he owed, a month later: 2,880 euros. More than 100% increase is a lot for a small rural business with little room for maneuver, with its three employees (the baker, the saleswoman, the apprentice) and its 180 baguettes baked per day. The energy shield of the State will not suffice. Like so many other colleagues at the moment, Laurent Rottier wondered if he was going to have to close his bakery.
So the people said no. One hundred and thirty people gathered in a community hall on February 3 to find a solution, in this case the purchase of a wood-fired oven, which consumes less energy, which would make it possible to compensate for the reduction in production, made inevitable by electricity surge. Cost of acquisition: 37,470 euros including tax. “Finding money to help pay his bills would have been tricky. Financing a wood-fired oven is a more acceptable idea, it makes you dream »says Marie-Claire Bretonneau, the coordinator of the collective created in the emergency.
A online kitty was immediately launched (it currently brings together around 2,000 euros). The organization of profit-generating events – a bingo, a hike, a tea dance – was imagined. A group of seamstresses offered to make bread bags and aprons whose sale would join a donation box installed in the bakery. Another group looked at grant applications and existing aid. Wood owners have promised to provide logs as soon as the new oven has been installed. The design, finally, of a “solidarity baguette”, at 2 euros, was considered, but Laurent Rottier rejected this idea. “Customers would not necessarily have followed. For them, too, the electricity increases »he said.
80 cents per baguette
It must be said that the price of bread is a sacred subject for this 50-year-old artisan baker, installed in the town since 2008. For a long time Laurent Rottier refused to reassess the price of his white baguette, immutably fixed at 80 cents. A matter of principle : “We are in the countryside here. » The rise in raw materials following the outbreak of war in Ukraine forced him to increase his flute by 5 cents a year ago. Then 5 additional cents, and 5 more again, at the start of the year. ” I am really sorry “, he wrote on the window of his nameless sign, simply called “bakery-pastry shop”. The man also bakes cakes, in particular generously topped chocolate éclairs – “weighing 300 grams, sometimes” – who forged its reputation around. They too have increased, from 1.60 euros to 2 euros in one year.
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